The English word transliterates a Japanese term. The etymology is generally traced to an abbreviation of the Japanese transliteration of the English word animation (shortened, as many foreign words appear in Japanese). Some non-Japanese fans claim the word comes from the French anim� (animated) or les dessins anim�s (animated drawings.) Occasionally in English the word is seen written as anim�, with an acute accent on the final e to let one know that it is pronounced, but this follows no standard transliteration scheme for Japanese.

Nominally the Prime Minister is the head of government, but real power lies with Kim Jong Il (the son of the late Kim Il Sung), the head of the Workers' Party and the military. Kim holds a string of official titles, the most important being General Secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea, Chairman of the National Defence Commission , and Supreme Commander of the Korean People's Army . Within the country he is commonly known by the affectionate title of Dear Leader, in contrast to Kim Il Sung, who is the Great Leader.

As the system firmware is upgradable, Sony has not ruled out support for other audio and video codecs in the future; these would have to be decoded in software rather than hardware (just as AVC, MP3, and ATRAC decoding are). It is also technically feasible for a third party to release a disk of decoders (on UMD format) to play back unsupported video files (from Memory Stick).